Am I the only reader who was disappointed that there is no thick line of undersea fiber leading to the island of Kinakuta in the Sulu Sea?
Submarine Cable Map
91–100 of 114 posts
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#92Would not many of these be military targets in case of a war?
What failover capability does the USA have?
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#93Wow, there are two cables running from northern Norway to Longyearbyen, on the island of Svalbard! According to Wikipedia, "Longyearbyen has approximately 2,060 inhabitants (at the end of 2007..." The total population of Svalbard is not much more. Edit/Add: The cable length is 2,714 km.
The reason for that is there's a an important satellite ground station on Svalbard - it's in an ideal place to communicate with polar-orbiting satellites: http://www.ksat.no/node/77 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System
Photographer Christian Hougue produced a really beautiful series on this ground stations called Arctic Technology. He mentioned that the air is some of cleanest in the world, which is a real boon to the equipment they're running.
http://www.soulfood.no/arctic_technology.html#img/arctic_tec...
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#94Why are there so many cables to Alaska?
Alaska has the combination of having a lot of coastline (more than the contiguous US) and lots of cities that aren't easily accessible by land. Most of southeast Alaska's cities (including the capital) have no roads in or out at all, but are on the coast, so undersea cables are the only practical means of providing connectivity.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#95Would not many of these be military targets in case of a war? What failover capability does the USA have?
Before a shooting war, like during te USA USSR cold war, militaries and intelligence agencies put a lot of effort into tapping one another's undersea cables. The trick is doing it without being detected, especially on a fiber cable. Operation Ivy Bells was one of the most documented.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#96Here's a 1901 version of the map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_East... And somewhat related, a wonderful book called The Victorian Internet: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802716040/ If you ever wondered whether the Internet really is a "series of tubes", here are the tubes: http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/f... That photo is from an interesting article (by my namesake…
The two linked popsci.com pages are both giving 404 errors for me – are you able to find a working link? They look interesting! (Technically speaking, the web server is returning 200 OK, but it's 'Page Not Found')
Hmm... Not sure what could be wrong there. The links are both working for me. I wonder if anyone else is getting the 404 errors?
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, almost all the transatlantic cables seemed to have been laid in the 2000s as well. I ran across this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telecommunication... Seems like each cable generally only has a life of 10-20 years.
Hmm, then what happens to outdated cables? Do we pull them up, or do we just turn off a switch at the shore and leave the rest in the ocean? Do the cables contain any substance that might pollute the seabed as the casing degrades away?
The APNG-2 cable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG-2_(cable_system) ) reused part of the PacRimWest cable. They literally pulled some of it up, respliced it and moved the end-point to Papua New Guinea.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#98Re: Submarine Cable Map
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
The two linked popsci.com pages are both giving 404 errors for me – are you able to find a working link? They look interesting! (Technically speaking, the web server is returning 200 OK, but it's 'Page Not Found')
Hmm... Not sure what could be wrong there. The links are both working for me. I wonder if anyone else is getting the 404 errors?
popsci.com seems to be redirecting for Australian-based IP addresses. Fails for me in Sydney, but works from my US-based VPS. This is the image: http://i41.tinypic.com/zx05kw.jpg and the Wayback Machine has the article: http://web.archive.org/web/20101231014805/http://www.popsci....
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#100Here's a 1901 version of the map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_East... And somewhat related, a wonderful book called The Victorian Internet: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802716040/ If you ever wondered whether the Internet really is a "series of tubes", here are the tubes: http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/f... That photo is from an interesting article (by my namesake…
Thanks for posting the 1901 map. I'm amazed at the extent of the network back then.
Of course, in 1901, each of those lines was measured in (low double-digit) words per minute. Now the metric is more like feature films per second. And the word "cable" once again means a communication line, not a message transferred over one.